half-commanding manner.  He was always very secretive, affected much mystery in movements, came and went abruptly, was direct and dogmatic to bluntness in his conversation.  His education was scant, his reading limited; he wrote strong phrases in bad orthography.  If we may believe the intimations from himself and those who knew him best, he had not only acquired a passionate hatred of the institution of slavery, but had for twenty years nursed the longing to become a liberator of slaves in the Southern States.  To this end he read various stories of insurrections, and meditated on the vicissitudes, chances, and strategy of partisan warfare.  A year’s border fighting in Kansas not only suddenly put thought into action, but his personal and family sacrifices intensified his visionary ambition into a stern and inflexible purpose.

[Illustration:  JOHN BROWN.]

It is impossible to trace exactly how and when the Harper’s Ferry invasion first took practical shape in John Brown’s mind, but the indications are that it grew little by little out of his Kansas experience.  His earliest collisions with the Border Ruffians occurred the spring and summer of 1856.  In the autumn of that year the United States troops dispersed his band, and generally suppressed the civil war.  In January, 1857, we find him in the Eastern States, appealing for arms and supplies to various committees and in various places, alleging that he desired to organize and equip a company of one hundred minute-men, who were “mixed up with the people of Kansas,” but who should be ready on call to rush to the defense of freedom.  This appeal only partly succeeded.  From one committee he obtained authority as agent over certain arms stored in Iowa, the custody and control of which had been in dispute.  From another committee he obtained a portion of the clothing he desired.  From still other sources he received certain moneys, but not sufficient for his requirements.  Two circumstances, however, indicate that he was practicing a deception upon the committees and public.  He entered into a contract with a blacksmith, in Collinsville, Connecticut, to manufacture him 1000 pikes of a certain pattern,[2] to be completed in 90 days, and paid $550 on the contract.  There is no record that he mentioned this matter to any committee.  His proposed Kansas minute-men were only to be one hundred in number, and the pikes could not be for them; his explanation to the blacksmith, that they would be a good weapon of defense for Kansas settlers, was clearly a subterfuge.  These pikes, ordered about March 23, 1857, were without doubt intended for his Virginia invasion; and in fact the identical lot, finished after long delay, under the same contract, were shipped to him in September, 1859, and were actually used in his Harper’s Ferry attempt.  The other circumstance is that, about the time of his contract for the pikes, he also, without the knowledge of committees or friends, engaged an adventurer, named Forbes, to go West and give military instruction to his company—­a measure neither useful nor practicable for Kansas defense.  These two acts may be taken as the first preparation for Harper’s Ferry.